Posts tagged ‘photography’

Installation view from the exhibition Family of Man, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 24–May 8, 1955. Edward Steichen Archive, V.B.i. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: Ezra Stoller

The Family of Man opened to the public on January 24, 1955. It included 503 works by 273 photographers hailing from 68 countries. The United States Information Agency circulated five copies of the exhibition, which were presented at 88 venues in 37 countries around the world over the next decade. In 1994, a version of the exhibition was permanently installed at the Clervaux Castle in Luxembourg, where visitors today can experience the exhibition as it was seen by more than seven million people over the last 60 years. As significant as that audience might be, it pales in comparison with the number of people who have held in their hands one of the 300,000 copies that have been sold of the accompanying catalogue, also first published in 1955.

Last year, The Junior Associates supported the Department of Photography’s acquisition of a recent work by the artist Laurie Simmons. This work, How We See/Look 1/Daria (2014), is part of Simmons’s How We See series, inspired by the practice in which individuals dress up as dolls or anime characters and paint eyes on their closed eyelids.

At one point during the installation of Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015, one of the MoMA art handlers asked, “Where are all the photos?” It’s a valid question. For an exhibition of photography, Ocean of Images contains fewer framed pictures than one would expect.

Don McCullin. Turkish woman mourning the death of her husband, Cyprus, 1964. 1964. Image courtesy Don McCullin and the filmmakers

“War is partly madness, mostly insanity, and the rest of it’s schizophrenia. You do ask yourself, ‘Why am I here? What is my purpose? What’s this got to do with photography?’ And it goes on and on, the questioning. You’re trying to stay alive, you’re trying to take pictures, you’re trying to justify your presence there.

As a member of a pre-mp3 devices generation, I have fond memories of trips to the record store. Holding a great LP cover is like holding its music in your hand; the best are a visual expression or translation of the music they deliver.

A screen grab of the Object:Photo website showing a map of selected events in László Moholy-Nagy’s life

When MoMA’s departments of Photography and Conservation set out to make a website to showcase the 341 photographs in the Thomas Walther Collection, the goal was to create an innovative resource that would take full advantage of the Internet’s interactivity. In December, MoMA launched Object:Photo, a digital research platform featuring four data visualizations that allow visitors to explore the materials, techniques, and art historical context of these 341 modernist photographs.

Posted by
Hannah Kim, Marketing and Book Development Coordinator, Department of Publications

Cover of Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters. Forty Years, published by The Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art first exhibited Nicholas Nixon’s photographs of the Brown Sisters in 1976, as part of his first-ever solo exhibition titled Longer Views: 40 Photographs by Nick Nixon. The series was in its infancy at the time and only two portraits of the sisters existed,

Celebrating the publication and exhibition on the 40th anniversary of Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters, the Department of Photography wanted to share from its collection a selection of “postcards” by Nixon that the photographer sent to the department’s former director, John Szarkowski. On the back of each of these photographs, one finds letters written by Nixon to Szarkowski.

It was around the end of April and I was still suffering from the cold of my first winter in New York, when I had the opportunity to choose a professional travel destination as a MoMA intern in the Department of Photography. And what better escape could there be than a photographic journey to California?

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